*A wonderful Fall Festival! The museum's largest event of the year and so much fun!

Build your own scarecrow (while supplies last, you may bring your own clothes if you like), Scarecrow clothes provided by Hospice and Solutions Thrift Stores and other wonderful donors. (This is a fundraiser for Special Olympics and the museum.) Over 100 amazing vendors and delicious food. Too many fun activities to list them all.

*Carnival games with prizes *Pony rides *Too many activities to list! *FREE

Professional photos (children and families) First come, first serve basis. Photos will be posted on Facebook the following week for guests to download.

Jennifer Lynn Miller Photography from 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

*Blacksmith demonstrations

*All museum buildings open, docents in period costumes

*FREE parking with the Sheriff's Mounted Posse (donations appreciated, but not necessary.

*There is also FREE remote parking at the Robert Sumner Judicial Courthouse 38053 Live Oak Avenue, Dade City. Bus transportation to and from the event. You will be dropped off and picked up right at the gate of the event.

This event has been going on for many years and is one of the museums largest events of the year. Regular museum ADMISSION.

Live entertainment throughout the day, great food, traditional craft demonstrations, museum village open with docents in period attire. Bring your lawn chairs, grab your spot for the reenactment, lunch from the concession stand, enjoy music from the 7 lbs of Bacon Mess Band prior to the battle. More information posted soon.

Raid on the Salt Works 2:00 p.m. Saturday & Sunday

It’s November 1864, the anachonda grip of the US Military is choking the life out of the Confederacy. Lee is bottled up in Richmond and Petersburg along with the Florida Brigade, inlcuding remnants of the 2nd, 5th and 8th Florida. Atlanta fell back in July and Sherman is now marching unchecked through Georgia, burning everything in his army’s path. The tattered remnants of the Confederacy’s Army of Tennessee, including the dwindling ranks of the 4th, 6th and 7th Florida, are on one final and fateful march north, about to be sacrificed at the breastworks outside Franklin and Nashville.

On the Gulf Coast of Florida Union raids are becoming more frequent and ferocious. Ever since the fall of Vicksburg in July of 1863, Confederate armies are now cut off from supply routes across the Mississippi. They are increasingly more dependent on the goods Florida produces like cattle, turpentine, citrus and salt. Salt was the lifeblood of any mid-19th Century army. It was one of the only ways to preserve food and was also used in curing leather. In New Orleans, at the beginning of the war, a 200-pound sack of salt cost 50 cents. By 1862, it was up to $25. A Confederate private made $11 per month. A salt works operation near Saint Joseph’s Bay, near present-day Panama City was capable of producing 150 bushels of salt per day but that operation was discovered and destroyed in 1862.

The Pioneer Florida Museum & Village’s 2019 Living History and battle reenactment follows the opening moments of various operations by the US Navy, Marines and infantry companies from many of the newly-formed United States Colored Troops (USCT) regiments against salt works operations between Cedar Key and Tampa Bay.

The way most raids would transpire was Union troops would show up, chase off the salt workers and perhaps some militia or Home Guards, then proceed to wreck the operation. In the museum’s 2019 scenario, lead elements from some the aforementioned units clash with salt workers and a handful of armed guards, chasing them through a nearby rail station, a patch of corn stalks and off the field. As the Union troops are wrecking the salt works operation, a hastily assembled group of Confederate units that might have included dismounted elements of the 2nd and 5th Florida Cavalry as well as members of the 1st Florida Reserve, Home Guards and state militia, rallies to the scene. The Confederates drive off the Union vanguard and re-take the salt works but no sooner are they repairing the salt works operation than Union artillery opens up. Full companies step into line and a pitched battle ensues as each side rushes any available units to the area.

In our 2019 presentation Raid on the Salt Works, the confrontation becomes more about pride than about salt. Weary of hit-and-run tactics, the Union soldiers want to stand toe-to-toe with their Confederate counterparts and take their measure. With the walls of their new nation collapsing around them, the desperate Confederates fight ever more fanatically. Who will prevail in this test of wills?

Bring a stocking stuffer or gift to donate for a senior citizen in need and your admission is $5. Items will be donated to the elderly in the local Cares program.

CARES (Community Aging and Retirement Services, Inc.) is a charitable, not for profit 501(c) (3) corporation that provides quality and caring services to meet the needs of older persons and their families in Pasco County. CARES promotes quality of life and independence for adults through health, social, and supportive services.

Please join us for a wonderful Spring Festival at the Pioneer Florida Museum & Village in Dade City!(FREE means included with admission):Live entertainment. Easter Bonnet Parades (FREE) - Petting zoo(FREE), Barrel train rides (FREE), Make your own Easter Bonnet or Top hats for the boys(FREE), Rock Painting (FREE), Wonderful shopping vendors, food vendors and concessions.Games in the barn (50 cents each and prizes given out while they last), Complementary photos with the Easter Bunny and more.

Every other month, starting in January, 6:00 p.m., usually the 3rd Friday. At the Pioneer Florida Museum,. Different speakers and presentations each meeting. Guests are welcome. A carry-in dinner precedes the program, so bring a dish to share as well as cutlery for your personal use, plate(s), (disposable is fine) and your beverage of choice. Usually held in the Mabel Jordan Barn, enter through Gate 4 (past the main entrance).

For more information, please contact: Glen Thompson,(352) 567-7449 or E-Mail: bookbollard @ iCloud.com . Historical society meetings are FREE and open to the public.

LOCATION: The museum is located 1.3 miles north of downtown Dade City, at the corner of US 301 and Pioneer Museum Road, turn east onto Pioneer Museum Road and cross the railroad tracks.

Better, not Bitter

My Perspective of the Public Library, Then, and Now

Come meet and hear the story of Dr. Cora Phelps Dunkley, one of six little African American sisters from Georgia, who never set foot in a public library during her childhood because of Jim Crow laws. Ironically, Dr. Dunkley spent thirty-five of her forty-one years as an educator, serving as a librarian in several educational settings, including an associate professor at the University of South Florida School of Information (USF/SI) where she taught students to become school and children’s librarians. Yet, Dr. Dunkley’s first experience in a public library was at age twenty-five when she took her oldest child to story hour at a library in Memphis, TN.

Having had limited library experiences in elementary school, it was during ninth grade when Dr. Dunkley became excited about her high school library, only to learn in most instances, it was a façade. Very few, if any of the resources in the collection reflected characters with whom she could relate. To further aggravate her desire to be an avid library user, each weekday on the bus ride from her high school in town to her rural family home, she would observe from the bus window, children enthusiastically entering and leaving the public library where she longed to be a patron. Her desire to enter the building were further enhanced, and then crushed, during the summer months when the local, weekly newspaper highlighted the summer activities in which she could not participate. Such experiences were denied Dr. Dunkley because she was the product of the segregated south in a small town in southwest Georgia.

Nonetheless, Dr. Dunkley did not allow those and other negative experiences to make her bitter. Rather, they made her a better person. Come hear her share her story using the topic: “Better, not Bitter: My Perspective of the Public Library, Then, and Now”, and how she continues to impact the lives of elementary children and their parents through her reading program, Cuddle Up and Read Every Day (CURED).

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CLASS SCHEDULE

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Cards shown above just an example, not actual cards you will make in class.